07 October 2005
INFRARED-OPTICAL TELESCOPE ARRAY (IOTA) OBSERVING PROPOSALS
January through April 2006
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Briefly:
1. Due date: noon (EST) on Tuesday, November 8, 2005
2. To submit a proposal, please follow the proposal guidelines at
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/oir/IOTA/Schedules/ .
3. Three telescopes are in routine operation in phase-closure mode. The
3-beam integrated optics H-band combiner from Grenoble has achieved H=7.
The 3-beam free-space RIJHK combiner is still under adjustment, and
should not be counted on for the coming trimester. If you are
considering the 2-beam asymmetric combiner, contact John Monnier
(monnier@umich.edu) first. Two direct-view prisms for J and H have been
tested, and software is being developed now; these will give about 3
pixels of dispersion across H-band for the small prism, and 7 pixels for
the large prism. A Wollaston prism is available for observations in
polarized light. The new star tracker from Lincoln Labs was improved to
gives lower dark current and lower read noise. The frame grabber is
available for star acquisition and alignment. An automatic alignment
system has been built and is already available by manual control.
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Comments:
The IOTA consortium invites observing proposals for the IOTA
interferometer on Mt. Hopkins, AZ.
We welcome proposals from new or experienced IOTA observers. New
observers should work with experienced ones on-site each night. For
safety, no one should work alone at IOTA.
Recognizing that SAO has a major investment in IOTA, we ask that
scientific work with IOTA include SAO personnel as collaborators.
Our web site has been updated, a complete list of IOTA-related papers
added, and many papers made available on-line:
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/oir/IOTA/ .
Instructions for operations are on this site as well.
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People:
* Dr. Marc Lacasse has been the resident IOTA engineer/scientist in
Tucson since August 1995; Marc's first priority is to work towards
making IOTA a facility-type instrument; his second priority is to assist
observers. His Tucson office is at Steward Observatory 520-670-5750,
his on-site phone is 520-670-6757, his beeper is 520-703-8976, and email
is mlacasse@cfa.harvard.edu .
* Dr. Peter Schuller joined the IOTA group in March 2003. He is
responsible for the star-tracker and other projects, including the web
site. Peter is at pschuller@cfa.harvard.edu or 617-495-7491 .
* Dr. Ettore Pedretti is a Michelson post-doc at the University of
Michigan, with Prof. John Monnier. He continues to advise and observe
at IOTA. He is at 734-647-9767 or epedrett@umich.edu .
* Dr. Herve Le Coroller joined the IOTA group in January 2005. He is
based at the California Association for Research in Astronomy (CARA) in
Kamuela, HI, working with Dr. Sam Ragland on the Mira Imaging Project.
* Dr. Sam Ragland is now an Interferometry Scientist at the Keck
Observatory. As PI for The Mira Imaging Project he will be at IOTA
often. He is at 808-881-3516 or sragland@keck.hawaii.edu .
* Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger received her PhD from Karl-Franzens University in
Graz, Austria in 2004, and joined us at the CfA in January 2005, working
on TPF science. She is at 617-495-7158 .
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Questions? - Contact
Wes Traub <wtraub%40jpl.nasa.gov> , tel 818-393-5508 or
Peter Schuller <pschuller%40cfa.harvard.edu> , tel 617-495-7491 .